Steve Madden’s Plan to Enter the Mobile World

Optimistic predictions about mobile advertising are not new at all. You can find a whole bunch of experts claiming that the mobile phone will become the most sought-after advertising platform in the future. However, when something that validates these claims happens, it surely is exciting.

Steve Madden, a San Francisco based retail shoe brand, has been bitten by the mobile bug and is considering shifting its focus on mobile phone advertising. Jared Horowitz, who is in charge of the business development section of Steve Madden, has stated that it has become an integral part of their digital business.

As of now, only 0.5% of Steve Madden’s revenue is generated by mobile users. The company, however, is hopeful that the revenue will increase significantly in the coming years if they develop a mobile optimized site and drive traffic to it by running innovative mobile advertising campaigns. So, to prepare themselves for the mobile juggernaut, they have come up with a long list of plans. They include

• Developing a mobile optimized WAP site which is easy to navigate.

• Adding lots of interactive features to the site like click-to-call functionality (to help people get in touch with sales persons directly) and mobile social networking functionality (to help people share their favorite stuff with their friends via email, Twitter, or Facebook).

• Adding a Store Locator feature to help people find the nearest Steve Madden store.

• Developing an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch to make it easier for iPhone users to reach the site.

• Setting up multiple revenue streams with mobile web display ads, mobile search ads, and in-app display ads.

• Introducing SMS offers and mobile coupons to engage potential customers.

• Devising innovative mobile marketing strategies to target potential customers.

According to the numbers revealed by the company, the non-optimized site of Steve Madden got more than 55,000 visitors via mobile devices in the month of February. There were more than 300,000 page views and 450 purchases. If they go ahead with the plan and implement the ideas they have come up with, they will be able to get a lot more visitors in a short span of time. More traffic, needless to add, will result in more revenue, which is always good news for any company. It should be interesting to see where Steve Madden goes from here.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Mobile World in 2009 - Some Numbers

Check out these numbers from the Mobile Market View study by BIA/Kelsey.

• The number of people who use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace increased by nearly 7% in 2009.

• The number of mobile users who send or receive more than 10 emails a week increased by nearly 10%.

• The number of mobile phone users who send or receive more than 10 text messages a week increased by nearly 10%.

• The number of people searching the internet for products and services available in their area increased by nearly 3%.

• The number of local searches done on the mobile phone exceeds the number of out-of-area searches. In other words, local search is increasingly becoming popular with mobile users across the country.

Done? Now, check out some random statistics I picked up from various sites on the internet.

• There are about three billion mobile phones in the world today, which makes mobile technology the most widely used technology on the planet today.

• For a large number of 16-24 year olds, the mobile phone is a lot more important than the TV.

• The number of people who have mobile phones is significantly higher than the number of people who have credit cards.

• The amount spent on mobile media rose by nearly 40% last year. In other words, mobile media is the fastest growing media channel in the world today.

• In 2012, the amount spent on mobile media in the U.S. will be somewhere around $6 billion. The total amount spent on mobile media worldwide will be in the range of $18-20 billion.

What do these numbers tell you? Firstly, the world is becoming increasingly mobile savvy. Secondly, a large number of mobile phone users use their phone for browsing the net, searching for stuff, listening to music, watching videos, and connecting with their friends through various social networking sites. So, the mobile phone is no longer just meant for sending and receiving text messages and calls. It is slowly becoming a multidimensional tool.

If 2009 is a precursor of things to come in the world of mobile phones, we can expect a lot more in the coming years. And that is good news for mobile advertisers all over the world.

Categories: All things mobile phones.

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A Detailed Look at Google’s Acquisition of AdMob

So, Google has acquired AdMob. Is it a big deal? Yes, it is. Will it have a big impact on mobile advertising industry? Yes, it will. Is it surprising? No, it is not. Let me tell you why.

Regular readers of this blog know a thing or two about AdMob. It is one of the few mobile advertising companies that I’ve written a lot about on this blog. Anyone who has seen the growth chart of AdMob will hardly find it surprising that a giant like Google has acquired the company. After all, the company has served billions of mobile ads and its clientele include big names like Yahoo.

AdMob specializes in web display ads and application display ads. When mobile users surf the net or play a mobile video game, they will be served targeted ads. Google, as you know, specializes in search ads. When mobile users search for something on the internet, the results page they get will contain targeted ads. Now, combine these two technologies and you have a killer mobile marketing strategy.

Google has spent an astronomical $750 million on this acquisition. Some people think it has spent a lot of money to acquire what many perceive a small business. I do not think so. Google, as we all know, has been trying to make its presence felt in mobile advertising market for quite some time now. While it is certainly seen as a force to be reckoned with, its success on the mobile market is nowhere near its success on the internet. So, acquiring a company like AdMob can help Google establish itself on the mobile phone advertising market.

Moreover, this acquisition will give Google a chance to understand the dynamics of the mobile advertising market. It now has access to a huge amount of data which includes the usage data of various mobile applications. It now knows what kind of mobile apps are preferred by mobile users and what kind of ads have the best conversion rate. With this knowledge, Google can fine tune its advertising strategies and get even better results. So, in my opinion, this acquisition can only be good for Google in the long run.

If you think about it, what Google has done is not surprising at all. You are a new entrant to the market. You see that a number of players are already going strong. You can grab a big share of the market by either competing with them or by buying them out. When you have enough money to buy half of your competition, the latter sounds like a much better option, don’t you think? Something tells me that we’ll see more such acquisitions in the recent future.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, Google.

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Customer-centric Mobile Advertising in 2020?

A recent report from OgilvyOne and Acision predicts an interesting scenario for mobile advertising in 2020.

The report says that in about a decade from now, in 2020, mobile phone advertising will be a lot more people-centric. Mobile advertisers, instead of spamming the inbox of the end user with random ads, will start delivering personalized ads which will be customized according to the end user’s preferences and tastes. In other words, the end user will determine what comes into his mobile phone. Since the content will be personalized and useful, a lot of people will be glad to opt into mobile advertising campaigns.

The report also says that the proliferation of 3G and 4G networks will fuel mobile advertising’s growth significantly. It will make services like mobile web, mobile social networking, and mobile TV, which are currently used only by a small percentage of mobile users, a lot more accessible for a large number of mobile users.

The report also goes on to add that the market will not be controlled by a handful of mobile operators in 2020. It is likely to become segmented and a lot of operators might consider offering ad-funded services. This could very well lead to a cohesive, symbiotic environment where both mobile operators and service providers complement each other and offer a lot of value for the end user.

Basically, the report pretty much sums up what I have been trying to say for a while now. If you need a little primer, you can check out this post. The future of mobile advertising, despite the objection of privacy champions, looks bright. In fact, it looks so bright that you can’t even look at it directly unless you are wearing shades.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Mobile advertising revenue to cross $2 billion - Says Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan has predicted that mobile advertising revenue in the U.S. could reach the magical $2 billion mark in 2012.

The fact that more than 85% of Americans, around 250 million of them, carry a mobile phone gives mobile advertising companies an enormous chance to reach a diverse customer base. So, we can expect a huge surge in mobile advertising revenues in the coming years.

The only concern, and possibly the most important concern, is that mobile advertisers and the network operators should see to it that they don’t cross the line between ‘targeted advertising’ and ‘invading privacy’. The very thought that someone, in this case mobile advertisers, knows where they are all the time turns off a lot of mobile users. So, mobile advertisers should be careful with what they do with the personal information of mobile users. If used properly, this could result in a highly profitable and highly targeted advertising model where both the customer and the advertiser are happy. If dealt wrongly, this could result in a major backlash from the customers. So, it’s a fine line indeed.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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